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Sleep was sacred to Kanda. Without it, his concentration slipped, his reflexes slowed, and his judgement impaired—all of which was likely to get him killed in the event of an unexpected skirmish if he wasn’t careful. At the Order, Kanda’s room had been a domicile of peace and quiet with no one ever daring to disturb him there, the occasional exception being Lenalee or the Rabbit. So having to share a room, and more often than not a bed, with a complete and total night owl was just short of torturous.
Now Kanda would concede one point, once Johnny actually fell asleep, the man slept like the proverbial dead—heavy and deeply (though roused by intermittent night terrors). It was just the process of falling asleep that the scientist seemed incapable of doing in a timely fashion, often spending hours thumbing through a book or scribbling things down in his notebook before ever achieving a horizontal state. And even after having finally lain down, Johnny would toss and turn restlessly until he finally managed to fall asleep, usually settling down curled up against the hollow of the swordsman’s back or tucked under one of his arms.
The older man had offered to sleep on the floor many times; Kanda had only ever taken him up on the offer once, but after seeing the way Johnny hobbled around stiff and sore the entire next day, he hadn’t had the heart to do it since.
Rainy nights seemed to bring out the worst of Johnny’s sleeping habits; he had been pacing back and forth across the small hotel room, book in hand, for the better part of two hours. His head buried underneath a pillow, Kanda could still make out the muffled footsteps and the flick of pages. With a sound that was half way between a groan and a growl, Kanda sat up and flung his pillow at the unsuspecting scientist, who let out an undignified squeak as the pillow hit its target.
“Sleeping’s a hell of a lot easier if you aren’t walking around, you know.” He snapped, earning a pout from his companion. Kanda took a deep breath and softened his tone, “Just. Lie down.”
Johnny started to protest and stopped, shutting his book with a sigh and slipping into the narrow bed, his back to the exorcist. Kanda said a silent thank you and turned off the bedside lamp before he relaxed back down onto the bed, spooning the smaller man so that neither one of them would fall off the edge in the middle of the night.
It didn’t hardly take ten minutes for the squirming to begin, starting small with a subtle shift of hips and slowly progressing up to the point where Johnny ended up turned all the way around facing him, head tucked under his chin. Kanda ground his teeth together lightly, praying that that would be that and the older man would fall asleep. It was a short-lived dream.
“…Hey…Kanda…?”
“That doesn’t sound like sleeping.” He muttered back against Johnny’s hair, not bothering to open his eyes. Kanda could almost feel the pout pressed against his collarbone, followed by a puff of hot air as the other sighed and scooched closer, fingertip tracing the black swirls of Kanda’s tattoo thoughtlessly in the dim light of the room.
“Do you have a favorite color?” There was an audible groan. “…So that’s a no?” A sigh.
“…red.”
“What kind of red?”
“The kind that represents you sleeping right now.” The scientist poked him in the side and Kanda’s lips twitched up at the edges. “Yours?”
Johnny hummed lightly, closing his eyes to picture it, “Green, like spring time…”
“Favorite place.”
Right here… “...I guess the Order; I’ve never traveled much before.” He yawned. “…sorry for keeping you up all the time…”
Kanda shushed him and continued asking mindless questions to the mousy-haired man until his responses became more yawn and silent spaces than actual answers. After a few minutes of blissful stillness between the two of them, he finally heard Johnny’s breathing slow down and even out. Kanda rolled his eyes, pressing a gentle kiss to Johnny’s brow before following him into a peaceful slumber.